Beyond the Plain of Jars
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
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106
228
Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
Phonsavan, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Phonsavan, Laos
We didn't get back to our hotel until after 11 PM last night and we are moving slow this morning. We signed up for a second day with Rasa and his driver. This time we are going to see the Ho Chi Min trail near Muang Kham about 50 kilometers from Phonsavan, a hot springs called Baw Noi, a cave, and a couple more villages with silk weaving/selling women. This day our tour cost us $100 which it was pricey. But we did see some interesting things. Our guide Rasa is in his late 20's and his family were early communist supporters originally from Vientiane, so we pumped him for information. He's answers were guarded at first. We learned that his grandfather was a party leader of some importance and had sent his father to China to go to school at the age of 13. It was during the Cultural Revolution and his father did not like it there
12-01
. He escaped by pretending to be a peasant and made his way by train to Vietnam but couldn't figure out how to get to Vientiane. He hung out around a Vietnamese Army camp and he kept hearing men shouting "fire." The men were captured Ravens, a group of US military on the ground in Laos to direct air attacks. They were being held in a barred cave. They were shouting fire because they were given 10 cigarettes a day but no matches. One of the Vietnamese guards asked him if he wanted to see the "giants". When he got up to the cage he was frightened and ran away. But later got more courage and learned English from them. One day a helicopter landed. He and the other kids had never seen one before and he got up close. He could see the pilot as he stepped out and the pilot saw him too. It was his older brother who was then able get him back to Vientiane. There were more family stories, but you get the idea. The whole of northern Laos was once under the ocean and then lifted up by tectonic movement, as a result the mountains are limestone and riddled with caves. During the conflict whole villages would live in these caves to avoid the bombs. We were taken to one celebrated cave called Tham Piu where the Laotian government claims two villages were hiding when a US jet fired a rocket into it killing between 200 to 400. There is a memorial building at the base of the mountain with lots of photos with anti-American slogans. One or two photos are of bodies including a dead buffalo with the caption Americans killed animals
12-02
. But most of them are of groups of party officials in cheap suits posing in rows and smiling or around tables looking at strategy maps. There's also a photo of a villager who shot the F-15 out of the air with his musket. We asked Rasa why the Americans would rocket this cave. He's answer raised more questions. He said maybe they thought it was a hospital. We thought, "Hmmm, why would they rocket a hospital?" If there were hundreds of caves with villagers hiding in them why was this the only one attacked? When showing us the Ho Chi Min trail he never mentioned Vietnamese soldiers using it. He told us about Pathet Loa troops pushing a tank by hand over the trail to the Plain of Jars so the enemy would not hear it coming. "That is how they won the war." The kid was raised in the party and apparently it is not politically correct, even now, to admit there were Vietnamese fighting in Laos. We were shown a Russian tank which had a large bullet hole in it about where the driver would have been. He said it was shot by the Pathet Lao troops. When we asked why the enemy of the communist Pathet Loa would be driving Russian tanks, he explained that the Royal government had bought them from Russia. We're thinking, "Hmmm, why would Russia sell tanks to be used against their allies?" At the time the Royal Army and Hmong were receiving armaments from the US to fight the Pathet Lao. So maybe this is the tank pushed up the Ho Chi Min trail. When we got back to our hotel that evening we read what the Lonely Planet had to say about the cave
12-03
. Apparently, the Ravens thought the cave was a hospital for Vietnam troops. Of course when the Laotians told the world that there were only innocent villagers it looked bad in the world press. After the war was over the Vietnamese felt so bad about the Lao villagers they exhumed their bodies and took them back to Vietnam for a proper burial. Both Vietnam and the US, along with other major powers had signed an international agreement to remove all foreign troops from Laos and let the people solve their civil war by themselves. The US had their secret war there and so did the Vietnamese. Apparently the Vietnamese still don't admit they were here. In the US the Air America pilots are in court fighting to get government pensions for their service there. But granting the pension would admit they were employed by the US government. And so it goes.
